A moment later Mrs. Anthony entered. I heard a suppressed gasp from Kennedy.
“The woman in the photograph!” he whispered to me.
I studied her face minutely from our coign of vantage. There was, indeed, a resemblance, too striking to be mere coincidence.
In the presence of Grady, she seemed to be nervous and on guard, as though she knew, intuitively, that she was suspected.
“Did you know Captain Shirley?” shot out Grady.
Kennedy looked over at me and frowned. I knew that something more subtle than New York police methods would be necessary in order to get anything from a woman like this.
“No,” she replied, quietly. “You see, I just came here today.” Her voice had an English accent.
“Did you hear a shot?”
“No,” she replied. “The voices in the hall wakened me, though I did not know what was the matter until just now.”
“Then you made no effort to find out?” inquired Grady, suspiciously.
“I am alone here in the city,” she answered, simply. “I was afraid to intrude.”
Throughout she gave the impression that she was strangely reticent about herself. Evidently Kennedy had not much faith that Grady would elicit anything of importance. He tiptoed to the door that led from the bedroom to the hall and found that it could be opened from the inside.
While Grady continued his questioning, Craig and I slipped out into the hall to the room which Mrs. Anthony occupied.
It was a suite much plainer than that occupied by Shirley. Craig switched on the light and looked about hastily and keenly.
For a moment he stood before a dressing-table on which were several toilet articles. A jewel-case seemed to attract his attention, and he opened it. Inside were some comparatively trifling trinkets. The thing that caused him to exclaim, however, was a necklace, broken and unstrung. I looked, too. It was composed of little crimson beads, each with a black spot on it!
Quickly he drew from his pocket the photograph he had taken from Shirley’s baggage. As I looked at it again there could be no doubt now in my mind of the identity of the original. It was the same face. And about the neck, in the picture, was a necklace, plainly the same as that before us.
“What are the beads?” I asked, fingering them. “I’ve never seen anything like them.”
“Not beads at all,” he replied. “They are Hindu prayer-beans, sometimes called ruttee, jequirity beans, seeds of the plant known to science as Abrus precatorius. They produce a deadly poison—abrin.” He slipped four or five of them into his pocket. Then he resumed his cursory search of the room. There, on a writing-pad, was a note which Mrs. Anthony had evidently been engaged in writing. Craig pored over it for some time, while I fidgeted. It was nothing but a queer jumble of letters:
SOWC FSSJWA EKNLFFBY WOVHLX IHWAJYKH 101MLEL EPJNVPSL WCLURL GHIHDA ELBA.
“Come,” I cautioned; “she may return any moment.”
Quickly he copied off the letters.
“It’s a cipher,” he said, simply, “a new and rather difficult one, too, I imagine. But I may be able to decipher it.”
Kennedy withdrew from the room and, instead of going back to Shirley’s, rode down in the elevator to find the night clerk.
“Had Captain Shirley any friends in the city?” asked Craig.
Glenn shrugged his shoulders.
“He was out most of the time,” he replied. “He seemed to be very occupied about something. No, I don’t think I ever saw him speak to a soul here, except a word to the waiters and the boys. Once, though,” he recollected, “he was called up by a Mrs. Beekman Rogers.”
“Mrs. Beekman Rogers,” repeated Kennedy, jotting the name down and looking it up in the telephone-book. She lived on Riverside Drive, and, slender though the information was, Kennedy seemed glad to get it.
Grady joined us a moment later, having been wondering where we had disappeared.
“You saw her?” he asked. “What did you think of her?”
“Worth watching,” was all Kennedy would say. “Did you get anything out of her?”
Grady shook his head.
“But I am convinced she knows something,” he insisted.
Kennedy was about to reply when he was interrupted by the arrival of a couple of detectives from the city police, tardily summoned by Grady.
“I shall let you know the moment I have discovered anything,” he said, as he bade Grady good-by. “And thank you for letting me have a chance at the case before all the clues had been spoiled.”
Late though it was, in the laboratory Kennedy set to work examining the dust which he had swept up by the vacuum cleaner, as well as the jequirity beans he had taken from Mrs. Anthony’s jewel-case.
I do not know how much sleep he had, but I managed to snatch a few hours’ rest, and early in the morning I found him at work again, examining the cipher message which he had copied.
“By the way,” he said, scarcely looking up as he saw me again, “there is something quite important which you can do for me.” Rather pleased to be of some use, I waited eagerly. “I wish you’d go out and see what you can find out about that Mrs. Beekman Rogers,” he continued. “I’ve some work here that will keep me for several hours; so come back to me here.”
It was such a commission as he had often given me before, and, through my connection with the Star, I found no difficulty in executing it.
I found that Mrs. Rogers was well known in a certain circle of society in the city. She was wealthy and had the reputation of having given quite liberally to many causes that had interested her. Just now, her particular fad was Oriental religions, and some of her bizarre beliefs had attracted a great deal of attention. A couple of years before she had made a trip around the world, and had lived in India for several months, apparently fascinated by the life and attracted to the mysteries of Oriental faiths.
With my budget of information I hastened back again to join Kennedy at the laboratory. I could see that the cipher was still unread. From that, I conjectured that it was, as he had guessed, constructed on some new and difficult plan.
“What do you think of Mrs. Rogers?” I asked, as I finished reciting what I had learned. “Is it possible that she can be in this revolutionary propaganda?” He shook his head doubtfully.
“Much of the disaffection that exists in India today,” he replied, “is due to the encouragement and financial assistance which it has received from people here in this country, although only a fraction of the natives of India have ever heard of us. Much of the money devoted to the cause of revolution and anarchy in India is contributed by worthy people who innocently believe that their subscriptions are destined to promote the cause of native enlightenment. I prefer to believe that there is some such explanation in her case. At any rate, I think that we had better make a call on Mrs. Rogers.”
Early that afternoon, accordingly, we found ourselves at the door of the large stone house on Riverside Drive in which Mrs. Rogers lived. Kennedy inquired for her, and we were admitted to a large reception-room, the very decorations of which showed evidence of her leaning toward the Orient. Mrs. Rogers proved to be a widow of baffling age, good-looking, with a certain indefinable attractiveness.
Kennedy’s cue was obvious. It was to be an eager neophyte in the mysteries of the East, and he played the part perfectly without overdoing it.
“Perhaps you would like to come to some of the meetings of our Cult of the Occult,” she suggested.
“Delighted, I am sure,”